Tom Cotton Urges Biden to Open Investigation into Temu, Says It Might Be ‘More Dangerous than TikTok’

Senator Tom Cotton demanded that President Biden open an investigation into Temu, the Chinese e-commerce platform, and clarify what legal authorities he would need from Congress to ban the app.

In a letter to Biden today, Cotton (R., Ark.) reiterated some of the long-standing concerns about Temu, including its alleged links to Uyghur forced labor and the questionable data-privacy practices of its parent company. It’s a bid to get the president to move toward a ban of the app.

“This malign app is a pipeline of dumped, counterfeit, and slave-labor products from China that is also gathering massive quantities of Americans’ personal data,” he wrote in the letter, obtained exclusively by National Review.

Since entering the U.S. market in 2022, Temu has rapidly established itself as a prominent e-commerce player — partly with the help of colorful commercials it ran during each of the two most recent Super Bowls.

It has also attracted the attention of China hawks on Capitol Hill, who have raised concerns about Temu’s use of a legal loophole that allows the tax-free import of packages if they are under $800. Packages that enter the U.S. under that rule therefore receive less scrutiny from Customs and Border Protection for compliance with laws prohibiting imports produced using forced labor.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found in a report last year that Temu’s business model allows it to avoid responsibility for compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and other forced-labor laws. And the Congressional Executive Commission on China wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to ask how Customs and Border Protection approaches its enforcement of the Uyghur forced-labor law in light of Temu’s rapid rise.

Cotton alleged that Temu is “harvesting vast amounts of personal information from American consumers” and wrote “Temu’s data gathering may be even more dangerous than TikTok’s.” He pointed to a recent lawsuit’s claim that it can access “everything on your phone,” adding that Temu parent Pinduoduo Holdings (PDD) was booted from the Google Play store following findings that it contained malware.

He also wrote that Pinduoduo disclosed that it had received $400 million in “income” from the Chinese government in 2023. This, he wrote, “suggests that PDD Holdings may be selling data collected on Temu to entities affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Cotton asked Biden a series of questions, including how much influence the Chinese government exerts over Temu and Pinduoduo, how many of the companies’ executives are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, and if the Justice Department’s intellectual-property section has investigated them for possible breaches of intellectual-property law.

“As with TikTok and other invasive Chinese apps, Temu has no place in America,” he wrote.